Merry Christmas, Everyone.

* A lighthearted narration of a family Christmas. *

Yes, it's that time of the year again. The Christmas tree is up, decorated with glass baubles and a string of flashing coloured lights, with stacks of wrapped presents surrounding the foot of the tree. The few Christmas cards displayed on the mantlepiece over a crackling fire shows that some relatives and friends had not forgotten this family. Across the ceiling, a couple of coloured ribbons are purposely twisted to give the wave effect, adding to the festive atmosphere, while at each upper corner of the room, inflated coloured balloons of various shapes complete the seasonal festive interior.

Outside, the ideal mock Tudor home stands alone in the winter countryside. The fields are covered with a layer of glistening, brilliant white snow, along with the leafless branches of any trees near the house, and near the end of one of the branches, a robin is perched, happily twittering away. Oh, such an idyllic, picturesque Christmas scene featured on many Christmas cards, a magical scene so removed from reality that such seasonal beauty can only exist within the imaginations and dreams of the artist who design these cards.

And so, a family living in a suburban terraced house tries to bring this idyllic Christmas scene closer to reality by installing a Christmas tree, then decking it with coloured baubles and those pretty lights, and surrounding its base with wrapped presents. The obsolete twisted coloured paper ribbons are replaced with cords of glittering tinsel, but the fully-inflated balloons are still tied with string to where the wall meets the ceiling.

But here in real Britain, there is no snow. Rather, fog may linger for much of the morning before clearing to reveal an overcast sky from where a light, unsightly drizzle precipitates as it starts to get dark by three-thirty in the afternoon. On the run-up to Christmas and seeing the stacks of wrapped presents surrounding the tree, a child with a sharp mind asks Mother just when did Father Christmas call, if all the presents are already here, perhaps feeling that first jab of reality that Santa Clause may not exist after all, and the aged, bearded gentleman in a red suit he had spoken to at the department store grotto could be an imposter after all!

On Christmas morning, the kids are excited as they unwrap their presents to reveal goodies that will keep them occupied for the rest of the day. When the adults unwrap their presents, their response may or may not be so enthusiastic. After all, if you want or need something, chances that you will go out and buy it yourself - at any time of the year. As such, husbands and boyfriends have a good idea of what to give their sweethearts for Christmas. For them, jewellery always does well. But for the male recipient, I guess it's going to be clothing. And without doubt, when the wife wants to keep her gift a surprise until Christmas morning, that's when not first trying out the garment in the store's fitting room may raise problems.

Ah, Father Christmas! Apparently, he wasn't able to keep track of me, especially after flying the nest whilst in my early twenties. I was living in a bedsit apartment without an open fire, hence having no chimney. One Christmas eve, I decided to leave a mince pie on a plate just inside the kitchen window left ajar. It was a sign of hospitality shown to the bearded elderly gentleman who might be feeling a bit chilly and hungry. Then I retired to bed. The next morning, the pie was still there, untouched, and there were no presents. One theory was that Santa felt it to be unfair to feast on the pie without sharing it with Rudolf and all the other reindeer pulling the sleigh. But he could have left my presents there, even in the kitchen, nevertheless. After all, the window was ajar and was able to open fully when required. When I saw that all my presents were at my parents home, the Theory of Unfairness was discarded in favour of his inability to track properly. Heh!

Is this all real, or am I kidding? I'll leave that for you to decide. After all, why shouldn't I leave a cake out for Santa? Such a kind act during the Season of Goodwill is perfectly plausible, isn't it?

Going back to a typical home scene on Christmas day. The pre-teen children are playing with their recently-gotten toys. The younger teenager is carefully laying out his train set. And dare you to call his train set a toy! To him, it's a hobby, and he would be the first to answer that there are many adults - fully-grown men - who own layouts that took ages and serious concentration to create and function. Finally, the older teenager is in his bedroom, totally absorbed in his new PlayStation that would put his skills to a fresh challenge.

Meanwhile, the remains of the turkey now sit, as if abandoned, in the kitchen, the dining room table is littered with unwashed Christmas pudding bowls and unwashed cutlery. A half-finished bottle of wine, a fruit bowl of tangerines and another of walnuts, mixed with hazel and brazil nuts dominate the table, along with the snapped halves of crackers, cheap and naff plastic tokens and ever more dreadful cracker jokes littering the tablecloth, along with discarded nutshells, orange peelings, and chocolate wrappers.

The husband relaxes in his armchair and he fills the air with the fragrance of a Cuban cigar, making the lounge even more Christmassy than before. Oh, happy day! The wife looks into the kitchen and sees a plethora of dirty dishes and pans waiting to be washed. These days, all she has to do is stuff the mouth of the electric dishwasher, slam the door shut and turn the start knob. What a contrast from the old days when all dishes and pans had to be hand washed. This was most likely the cause of intense quarrels. The wife, the poor soul, spent all morning slaving over the cooker, ensuring that she did her best with the main dinner. Now she felt whacked and would appreciate her husband taking over the kitchen duties, even if it means just stuffing the dishwasher. He can thank his lucky stars for the handwashing had become a thing of the past.

Yet, there he was, in full relaxation in his cosy armchair, somehow managing to puff away at his cigar and snooze at the same time. Suddenly, one of the balloons burst with a loud pop. Both husband and wife were startled by the loud instantaneous noise shattering the peace, and he looks up to see a limp piece of thin rubber suspended next to its fully-inflated companion. The loud pop had also irritated his wife to a point of losing her temper, accusing him of laziness when there is a pile of dirty dishes to be seen to. After all, wasn't she in the kitchen all morning? All the ingredients for a massive quarrel are now in place, much to the consternation of the children, who are all quite used to it, and well expected too, on Christmas Day.  

After a war with words, he finally arises and makes his way to the kitchen. All the ceramics he arranges neatly inside the dishwasher and gets it going. With the pans, giving them a good scrub with a Brillo pad, or better still, a coarser scourer will burn up that excess energy generated by his wordy altercation. At the sink, he thinks about the balloon. Why did that damned thing burst, just like that? This was not the first time either. He had seen balloons burst spontaneously before, and the sudden loud noise cannot only be startling but it can jar the nerves, even resulting in a painful back muscle strain. Who was the brainless, air-headed idiot who invented the balloon?

One thing is certain: This will be the last Christmas spent at home. From next year on, he'll book a place for the family to have Christmas dinner at a pub restaurant. There, they can enjoy all the trimmings of the festive holiday, perhaps with an even livelier atmosphere as well, and not worry at all about the washing up afterwards. And as for the balloons, they were the wishes of the youngest son, James. No more balloons next year! He had enough of them!

  

Ah, with the dishes done, it's the traditional Christmas afternoon family game of Monopoly. Dad calls his sons to the table to play the game. However, the youngest, eight-year-old James was exempt, as he was still considered too young to fully understand the fabric of the game. He then calls down his eldest son, 17-year old Peter. But, being fully immersed in his video game, no way would he stop to play that capitalistic evil, that epitome of greed, the dog-eat-dog, rat-race love for profit at the expense of another's suffering and loss. The nation's economy was one of the current A-Level subjects of his school curriculum, and the more he learned, the more the idea of socialism had an appeal.

Again Dad called, and again Peter answered with a loud and distinct "NO!" Eventually, the parent allowed to let his son have his own way, just to keep the peace. The four sat at the table, husband, wife, who herself held down a career in marketing, so she knew quite a bit about profit and loss, and their other two sons, twelve-year-old Richard and 14-year old Mark.

During the game, the throws of the two dice allowed Mark to buy all four London terminus stations - Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, and Marylebone. The teenager would have wished to have purchased St Pancras instead of Marylebone, as the former had a direct Eurostar route to Paris and Bruxelles respectively, such a facility would have a much greater value. However, with the other three players unwillingly landing on all four stations as determined by the luck of the dice rather than market research, not only Mark was able to make a killing but with his four stations, managed to bankrupt his three opponents.

At last, evening television. As Dad checked the programme schedule, he was disappointed at the rubbish and repeats that will be aired, including a puppet rat, or whatever, prancing around and taking up a peak viewing slot. He sat back at his armchair and grinned. He recalls tales of televisions thrown into the dustbin outside on Boxing Day, as well as TV screens smashed by driving a fist into it. Surely, not true tales, but the kind of stuff shown on Christmas Day does rouse the temptation to do either, perhaps both. He checked the list. On one of the commercial channels, the movie, Towering Inferno is shown, and although repeated several times since it was released on the Big Screen as far back as 1974, he decided to settle for another repeated oldie, Harrison Ford and his Raiders of the Lost Ark, purely on how he likes the bit towards the end when spirits from the golden box swallow up all the nasty members of Hitler's Nazi Party.

Oh well, that's another Christmas Day over for another year, a mighty anticlimax of all the build-up and the preparations that led up to it. Santa Clause seems far gone, forgotten, along with the church carols of Christmas eve tradition. Somehow, there seems to be a general forgetfulness on what Christmas is all about, to celebrate someone's birthday.

A Monopoly Board Game.

Although this blog light-heartedly follows the goings-on of a typical British suburban family at Christmas, I just wish to remind the reader of the greatest gift God had ever given - the birth of His Son Jesus Christ. Having taken place in a small insignificant village on the hills of Judah, this baby was born specifically to die, and to die a cruel, painful death on the cross, buried, and on that Sunday morning three days later, to rise physically from the dead - the only human being ever to be resurrected in the whole of human history, and therefore, He can, and is now willing to give eternal life as a free gift to all believers.

Again, let us not forget the stark reality of his birth rather than the perfect Christmas card image of a mother holding a sleeping baby. At birth, he cried, like any other newborn. This was to fill his lungs with air for the first time. In other words, taking his first breath. After that, the mother had to cope with breastfeeding, followed by his need to pee and defecate. Indeed, he may be wrapped in swaddling clothes, but his need to meet the needs of nature was the same for him as any other child.

And then on the eighth day after birth, he had to be physically circumcised to fulfil the Jewish law for all boys. As the knife severed his foreskin, he let out a scream, just as all babies do. That is what it means for God to incarnate as a man to atone for us. He emptied himself, taking a form of a servant, and dying for us, even death on a cross.

Hence, this is a true saying: that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners. That means Christmas is about Easter. The death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a condemned Jew glorified as a saving, and eventually as a reigning Messiah, as foretold by the prophets hundreds, even thousands of years earlier.

My next blog will be in two weeks from now, that is, written on New Years Day, God permitting. In the meantime, I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. And I say this despite the current pandemic problem. I thank and praise God for giving us the ability to produce vaccines to help combat the virus. Wonderful mercy from God.

Indeed, just as the Nativity was an act of God's mercy for us.